visage wrote:
Now that Adventurers start with Combat Training, you don't need Matter to survive the escape from Reknor -- that category point can be switched to Tinkers.
I also think a more careful player than I could get by without Vines/Tarrasca.
I was hoping to report back after beating Madness, but alas my most recent run met an
ignominious end on the 10th floor of High Peak. ...and I think that's it for me trying Madness for a while.
Some observations, based on that and my many preceding attempts at alternate builds:
My build was somewhat different from vonfackenheim's:
Initial Talents: FEM, Demonic Pact, Earthen Power, Flux, Strife, Doomshield, Ooze.
Category from level 10: Tinkers
Category from level 20: Vines
Category from 36+bile: Magical Combat + Earth
Prodigies: Superpower and PES
Tinkers are amazing for this build. You want 100% immunity to all the critical status effects, and Disarm is
definitely a critical status effect for this build.
I'm definitely now of the opinion that
I don't want to use a variant of this build to try to beat Madnes
without Vines+Tarrasca... after many attempts that tried other approaches for tanking. In this run, I took Vines at 20 instead of 36 because my preceding run had hit a wall at around 33, with nowhere survivable enough for me to get the last three levels and pick up Vines+Tarrasca.
I went with Superpower + PES because I was relying on Dominate for resistance penetration for most of the game -- I needed all the mindpower I could get. In the end, it was insufficient; my mindpower was topping out at around 85 or so even with PES and I was running into enemies with 130+ mindsave and 100%+ resist-all. Dominate also suffers from Orcs being able to cleanse themselves of it. :p On any future attempts, I'll be dumping Strife for something else; that's a shame, because Strife provides both respen and mobility on top of the utility effects like pinning and hatevision. That means I'll likely be dropping Superpower. PES is likely to remain high on my list of potential prodigies, though -- once you can tank through anything, the limited uptime of an
offensive prodigy isn't a huge deal.
I went with Earth over Stone for two reasons: I was short on class points by that point, and I wanted to see what Augur could do with a dual-shields-plus-staff build. For all that the peak-case damage of Augur is lovely, I'll probably go back to Stone in any future attempt -- the respen sustain is just too valuable. ...and Augur digging through walls is a downside. A note, though -- I found that the difference in mana generation/consumption wasn't too bad; while Augur itself consumes more mana per attack than Earthen Missiles and produces less (from mana-on-crit items), Flame Bolts generated plenty of mana in any situation where I was facing more than a single enemy. (It definitely helped that I had a ring of 11 mana-on-crit, though.)
Most of my damage before Augur (and after the first few levels) was from weapon damage and from Earthen Fury (the shield ego that gives you a damage proc equal to your armor value). The latter is an awfully rare ego; while I've had runs that found a dwarven steel EF shield in a shop, in my last run I didn't see any the entire game... but fortunately I had a stralite EF shield in the vault, along with Titanic. Procs other than EF added a sizeable amount of damage for much of the game, but that dropped off significantly as I ran into more and more enemies with 90%+ resist-all and that could ignore Dominate one way or another. Even after Augur, weapon damage and EF were key sources of damage.
Since I took Superpower and PES as my prodigies I did not have Eternal Guard. Eternal Guard is not necessary, but it is very nice and I'm likely to try it again if I take another shot at Madness with this build someday. I would definitely have liked to have EG in the cases where my sustains were disabled; note, however, that you cannot depend on block having 100% uptime with EG when you're slowed (or, I assume, under Burning Hex). For best results with EG you do need to focus your shields on getting resistances to cover all of the spike damage types, which means you're probably going without Earthen Fury and other offensive effects.
Ooze: I think this is a great tree for the build. In the early game, Mitosis saved me many times; in the late game, Indiscernable Anatomy meant I could ignore crits and made it a lot easier to hit 100% on important status immunities. It's entirely possible that Mitosis was very useful in the lategame... but it's hard to say just how much damage the oozes were absorbing as they generally died before I got a turn to inspect them. The equilibrium recovery was definitely convenient, and I did use Reabsorb as a panic button a few times.
A side note about Demon Seeds: switching them takes zero time, so you absolutely should be swapping out your shield, weapon, and helm seeds based on the situation. ...sometimes turn-by-turn. I'll admit, though, that I just left the Air Recycler in the helm slot most of the time for the silence immunity.
Items I pulled from the vault for this run: Titanic, a T4 shield with Earthen Fury, Tarrasca, 11-mana-on-crit ring. Items that I would have had to pull from the vault if I hadn't found them: a pair of gloves of dispersion (for Osmosis and Shield of Light among other things); a pick of Perfect Strike (for Dreadmasters).
Inscriptions: I went with Heal/Move/Wild early and Heal/Move/Move late. I could see value in running Pain Suppressor with 100% uptime, and want to try that at some point (is there an easy way to automatically use Pain Suppressor when available?); I'm currently unconvinced on the value of a not-100%-uptime Unstoppable Force.
Some thoughts on trees I didn't use:
Matter: most of the value of this comes from dispersing Recovery, and that's mostly covered by Healing Nexus.
Demonic Strength: an extra instant heal would be nice in the early game, and +30% damage would be nice late, but I couldn't justify it.
Agility: I've really liked the damage reduction from this the times I've used it -- 5 points in endgame means knocking 300 damage off of 45% of incoming damage chunks. I could imagine running it in place of Ooze if I needed to get by with fewer class points. The upside is that it's not a sustain so you can't be stripped of it; the downside is you can't guarantee it'll proc on the damage spike that would otherwise kill you. Also, if you want to use it in the early game you're going to want to put stat points into Dex...
Lethality: The respen only affects weapon attacks, so it doesn't help with Magical Combat or Earthen Fury.
Light: The additional cleanse was really nice the times I took it, but in my final run I just couldn't spare the category point for it.
Conveyance: I considered Blindside to be good-enough mobility to justify not taking this. Given that I'm dropping Strife in the future, Conveyance is on my queue to try next time I take a run at madness with this build.
Final note: OMG, a summoner boss with Grand Arrival sucks so very very much. "Oh, look, Ritch Flamespitters putting debuffs on me for -125% fire resistance. ...and Warhounds putting -125% physical resistance on me, too. Brainlock? Oh, sure, throw that on me as well."